Vijay Varma with the real life IC 814 pilot Devi Sharan.
Captain Devi Sharan was the pilot of the Indian Airlines Flight IC 814, that was hijacked in December 1999.
Netflix’s new series, IC 814: The Kandahar Hijack brought back memories of the harrowing events that played out in the last week of December 1999. For the unversed, an Indian aircraft bound to New Delhi from Kathmandu was hijacked. The passengers were under hijackers’ custody for a whole week and the pilot was asked to fly around several destinations. The man in the pilot’s seat was Captain Devi Sharan. The role, in the series, was played by Vijay Varma.
While the series gives us a glimpse of how events played out, director Anubhav Sinha revealed he had a conversation with the pilot during the making of the series and they revisited several incidents of the hijacking. This includes the pilot force-landing the aircraft on a highway in Lahore.
In a video shared by Netflix, Anubhav recalled Devi Sharan talking about taking off the aircraft from Amritsar and within 10 minutes, he realised the aircraft was running out of fuel. “It was just a 10-minute flight, but the plane didn’t have the fuel to gain altitude,” Anubhav revealed, adding that he was not getting permission to land the flight.
“I asked him, ‘What were you thinking when you decided to land on the highway?’ And he said, ‘I was prepared to land on a highway so that at least a few people survive, but I also felt that this threat might convince Lahore authorities to grant us permission to land at the airport,’” Anubhav shared.
The director added that the pilot has a mark due to the gun that was placed around his neck throughout the hijack. “He still has a mark on his neck from where the hijackers had put the gun on him. It kept rubbing against his skin for so long that it left a mark, and the mark is still there,” the filmmaker shared.
In an interview with Sucharita Tyagi on her YouTube channel revealed that Devi Sharan resumed work four days after the hijack ended. “He started flying 4 days of this incident. He said he didn’t want fear to get the better of him. When you meet somebody who goes through life with that much determination…it shows the character and I just played that,” he said.
